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Wednesday, 10 January 2018

Our Connect with money at each Life Stage

Every specie on this planet earth
has a life cycle. We humans are no exception. We also have a life cycle and
within this life cycle we pass through different life stages. There are certain
responsibilities which we perform at each life stage and somehow most of these
activities are related to money. Let’s see our life’s connect to money and how
it impacts our life cycle.

I.Childhood
and Education

We remain in this life stage for approximately 20-25
years (from birth till graduation/post-graduation). Though we don’t earn money
here, but our life is quite dependant on the kind of money our parents earn.
Money lessons learnt from the surroundings in this stage form the foundation of
our money behaviour going forward.

II.Career
Development

This is the stage where we get directly connected to
money. In the beginning of this stage, most of us splurge, party, and enjoy our
earnings as we are accountable to none. People who understand savings at this
stage are clearly the winners, because they will save more money due to early
beginner advantage and it will have compounding effect on the savings as well.

III.Family
Formation

In this stage we get married, have kids, buy house, etc.
This is the stage where most of us have dependants – wife, kids or even old
parents. There are also needs like house hold expenses, medical expenses, kids
school fees, parent’s medical expenses. At this stage we truly get to worry
about future and start saving for kid’s college, our retirement, contingency
planning, and tax planning. People who have prudent planned savings at this
stage can catch up with the early savers.

IV.Pre-retirement
Phase

This phase is the best monetary phase for most of us.
Here, the kids are already into their jobs, most of the debts are paid, and most
of the people are at peak of their careers. This phase gives the maximum
surplus to invest for retirement needs. It is a very important phase to create
an emergency health corpus other than the health plan to cater to health needs
in case of an unforeseen illness.

V.Retirement

This is the final destination. We all have plans for
retirement. This phase makes us realise the value of all the savings done
earlier in our lives. But, not all of us retire, some of us still work in areas
of our interest may be for full-time or part-time, which provides cushion to
the retirement corpus and might add on to the legacy corpus.

In all the life stages, money forms an important
factor that cannot be ignored. The earlier we teach our kids about money
management, the better it would be for them as it would help them define good
relationship with money for all their lives.